When Did You Last Get Development?

Posted by Sarah Hobbs

While the aim of this blog is to focus on the support that you offer to your team, it’s important to step back from time to time and make sure that you’re keeping yourself sharp too. Focusing on your own development brings lots of benefits:

1. It makes you better at what you do;
2. It helps you move your own career forward;
3. It gives you content and ideas that you can pass on to your team;
4. Your team see that you prioritise your own development and this sets an example (followers mimic their leaders).

With that in mind, ask yourself the question – what have I done to develop and grow in the last six months? If the honest answer is “very little”, this article today is for you.

1. Do you know what to develop?
   Sometimes we don’t develop because we’re not sure where we should focus. If you get this blog because you’ve been through our Talent Manager programme, go back to your strengths tool and redo it, focusing on ‘which enhanced skill would raise my game to a higher level?’. Don’t assume that you need to develop a weakness. It may be more achievable to learn how to manage the impact of that weakness – using systems and reminders, or developing strategies to work around the weakness, or by involving others who have a strength in your area of weakness – to advise you or deputise for you. Or you may want to develop a skill that you are ‘OK’ at, making this a powerful new strength to your portfolio. Or it might be that you have a native strength and want to raise it to the highest level by working with top professionals – this is often very beneficial for your career, as you are usually hired for your strengths, and not your lack of weaknesses!


2. Don’t just focus on the essentials
   We often relegate development to being about only those things that we absolutely have to do. Remember that along the way there is a career that you are trying to drive – and that often what stands out is the extra initiatives you take to add value over and above your job description. How much of your recent development has been on the here and now, and how much has been driven by a broader, longer-term look at the development that will support your aspirations?


3. Remember that development is very broad
   It’s not just about courses! Look at all the alternatives you have available to develop – can you get an introduction to someone who is just fantastic at the skill or judgement that you want to develop? Is there an online resource that you can get hold of? When was the last time you watched a TED talk? Is there a book you’ve been meaning to read? A conference you’ve been desperate to go to? There are so many things you could do, pick one of the things that inspire you and start it today!


4. Apply your learning to a real problem
   If something is quick to learn, it’s also quickly forgotten. The hard bit about learning is to ‘chew’ and absorb the learning. We do this by working out where and how to apply our learning to a real problem. Only when we use our learning do we fully understand and remember it.


5. Involve other people
   If you are likely to put it off, try to engage other people to do it with you. You will be far less likely to postpone if you’ve set something up for your peer-group or team, or even for your own team.

TAKE AWAY
It’s a sad fact that very often when we get busy we push our own development to the bottom of the pile. Is it time to choose something that will have a long-term impact on your career aspirations and to get working on it?